Monthly Archives: August 2014

There is this chick named Oya
she’s really less of a chick and more of a god
she has a pretty crazy portfolio
as in, the only characteristic shared by all the things she is god of
is that they are all things that are the coolest
like she is in charge of chaos
destruction
lightning
a river
the number nine
and death
but only part of death
like, the part where you first die
where you’re standing at the gates of the cemetery
like “HMM SHOULD I DIE?”
and she’s like “Yeah bro come right in
my sisters will take great care of you
but if you could just hurry it up
I really have some shit I need to destroy/strike with lightning.”

I feel like gods must have pretty high job satisfaction.

So obviously Oya is a super eligible bachelorette
this makes it super complicated to decide who she marries
so Obatala (patron god of the disabled) cuts through the red tape
by stripping Oya of all agency and picking her a husband she hates.
(Obatala gets to be in charge of things
by virtue of the fact that he made humans one time when he was drunk
but that’s a whole other story
that you can read in my book!)

This shitty husband is named Ogun
Obatala gives Oya to Ogun basically just to calm Ogun down
because, see, Ogun is the god of making things out of metal
but unlike some metal-gods I could name
Ogun is actually metal as fuck
like, his favorite metal thing that he has
is a giant metal machete
which he carries with him all the time
and uses to stab EVERYTHING
plus he’s usually drunk, so that doesn’t help.

So Obatala makes Oya marry Ogun
and Oya is like “Seriously?
You want to chain me to this musclebound knife maniac
in the hope that i will make him jizz out all his aggression?
fuck this, I’m having an affair.”
So she hooks up with the absolute best dude to have an affair with:
Chango, GOD OF THUNDER
(yeah, being a philandering nut-lord is one of the prereqs for thunder godhood in any pantheon)
Chango is super into Oya
because obviously
so they instantly start banging up a storm
LITERALLY
HA HA HA

Chango is super happy about this of course
so he celebrates in the natural way:
by getting hammered at a party and dancing his ass off
(is it just me
or are all the Yoruba gods just constantly hammered?
I feel like the Greek gods maybe did a smart thing
by concentrating all the alcoholism on a single member of the pantheon
but if so
that is the ONLY SMART THING THE GREEK GODS DID)
anyway, Chango is drunk-dancing
“swaying his hips and showing all of his sexual masculinity”
and wearing a crown the whole time
to make sure no one forgets that he’s king.

So … the thing about being a dick-swinging thunder god
is that it tends to make you enemies
and the thing about getting drunk at a random party
is that then your enemies show up and kidnap you
and no amount of sexual masculinity can save you from your fate
so some bad guys throw a bag over Chango’s head and tie him up
and he’s like “noooooooo
I only got to do like half as much hip-swinging as I wanted to.”

So meanwhile Oya’s chilling at her place
waiting for Chango to show up so they can fuck
and he left all his stuff at her place
(they are not being very discreet about this affair)
so she gets bored
and goes and checks out Chango’s mortar.
I’m not talking about a mortar as in a piece of heavy artillery
I’m talking about a large heavy bowl
generally filled with meal to be ground
but in this case full of SECRETS

Oya looks in the mortar
and there’s this liquid in it
and reflected in the liquid she sees Chango tied up
and she’s like “bro if you wanted to do that you shoulda just come over”
and he’s like “actually I’m trapped you should help me out.”
and she’s like “ok”
but then she tries to make out with him
and instead gets a mouth full of that mysterious liquid

GUESS WHAT
IT’S GASOLINE
and Oya is the god of lightning
so she’s basically a giant electric ignition system
so every time she opens her mouth now
FIRE SHOOTS OUT
so she’s like “OKAY”
(setting her house on fire in the process)
“TIME TO MAKE THE PAIN RAIN.”

so she calls down some lightning
and she rides that lightning to where Chango is at
and all of a sudden the kidnappers see this chick come plummeting out of the sky
throwing lightning bolts and breathing fucking fire
and she sets Chango free
so he starts chucking thunder
it is awesome
for everyone except for the people who are exploded/on fire/electrocuted

And to this day
whenever Chango goes into battle
he’s always like “Hey Oya
could you go out there and warm up the crowd for me
and by warm up the crowd I mean burn them to a fucking crisp?”
and Oya is like “Shit yeah
let me just put on pants and grow a beard for effect.”
Obviously their relationship is way more stable than Zeus and Hera’s

So the moral of the story
is that the family that slays together
stays together.

So I told the story of Besouro last week
aka THE BLACK BEETLE
which reminded helpful netizen Joey “Josephus” Joestar of ANOTHER story
that is ALSO from brazil
and ALSO involves a beetle
the beetle starts out black
but shit quickly gets out of hand…

so there’s this beetle ambling along
(this is a crazy thing about beetles
normally if you are looking at a beetle
you will see that it is either crawling or scuttling
depending on the surface it’s moving across
but if you zoom in real close
you will discover that it is actually always ambling
this is a key principle of biolinguistics.
Actually no, waitthat’s a totally different thing)
this beetle is not going anywhere in particular
where the fuck does she have to go?
she’s a fucking beetle.

Then there’s this rat
he’s’s not going anywhere in particular either
but he is going there MUCH FASTER
just skittering back and forth all day like a disgusting idiot
(interesting fact about rats
if you are well disposed towards a moving rat, it scampers
if you hate it, it skitters instead
fact 2: no one is well disposed towards rats
because they are terrible and stupid)

so this rat skids to a stop in front of this beetle
like “HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA WHAT UP DICKBOAT
WHEN IT COMES TO THE SMALLEST, SHITTIEST ANIMALS IN THE FOREST
I AM THE HARLEY DAVIDSON
AND YOU ARE THE HARLEY DAVIDSON SIDECAR
THAT ISN’T ATTACHED TO ANYTHING
BECAUSE YOU ARE SO
DAMN
SLOWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW”
(he makes his voice real low when he says “slow”
in order to emphasize the slowness he is describing
it is highly unnecessary)

The beetle is pretty offended
but she is used to street harassment from the local fauna
so she’s just like “oh wow yeah you’re so fast good job
I bet you can run really far away and never come back
ready set go.”
but then this parrot swoops in
(parrots only ever swoop.
they are one of the species of birds
that is congenitally incapable of fluttering, flitting, or soaring
it is a tragedy)
and the parrot is like “CA-KAWW, BITCHES
DID SOMEBODY SAY READY SET GO?”
and the beetle is like “I did
but I didn’t want it to become a big thing
can we just drop it”
and the Parrot is like “NO
YOU GUYS ARE RACING NOW
WINNER GETS A PIMP COAT”
and the rat is like “OH FUCK YEAH
I WANT LEOPARD PRINT”
and the beetle is like “Ok, you know what
this is stupid as hell
but i could really use a new coat.”
and the Parrot is like “GREAT
I LOVE RACES
NOBODY EVER RACES WHEN I RANDOMLY SHOW UP AND ASK THEM TO
YOU GUYS ARE AWESOME
OKAY YOU ALREADY SAID READY SET GO
SO NOW THE RACE IS HAPPENINGGGGGGG”

then the Parrot swoops off
and the rat starts hauling ass
(this is possible due to a technicality:
all animals, in periods of extreme excitement/stress
with the possible exception of the slow loris
are capable of hauling ass
even if that is not how they normally move
the only animal that moves this way constantly
is the snail
snails do not move very fast
but they are always moving as fast as they possibly can
hence, hauling ass
this knowledge suddenly makes watching snails REALLY EXCITING)

so the rat is skittering his disease-ridden ass off
already making plans for the clubs he is going to get into with his sweet coat
and the beetle is nowhere to be seen
until he arrives at the end of the race
and the beetle and the parrot are just chilling out waiting for him
and he’s like “WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK”
and the beetle is like “well since this race was officiated by a bird
flying was totally legal
so I just sorta did that”
and the rat is like “YOU CAN FLY?!”
and the beetle is like “yeah
what did you think all this junk in my trunk was?”
(oh yeah, I forgot to mention the flying earlier
when I was explaining how beetles move.
this is a literary technique known as “neglecting to tell you key information.”)
so the beetle gets a pimp coat
that doubles as sweet green battle armor
and everyone continues to hate rats forever.

So the moral of the story
is you shouldn’t let birds officiate races
they are totally biased.

Hey I was at a convention all weekend
it was in Indianapolis and it was called Gen Con
maybe some of you were also there.
While I was there I got to play a really great round of a really great RPG
run by a dude who turned out to know MORE ABOUT MYTHOLOGY THAN ME
(he has a cool tumblr that you can read)
after rapping a good portion of the Odyssey for me
he told me about a mythological baddass I’d never heard of
whose tale I must now pass on to you.This dude is known as THE BLACK BEETLE.

But for the purposes of this post
we are going to call him by his non-anglicized name, Besouro
because when you try to search THE BLACK BEETLE on google
you end up with this clown
and he has absolutely nothing to do with our story.

So Besouro gets born in Brazil in the 1890s
and his parents make the HUGE mistake
of being black in Brazil in the 1890s
which means that Beouro also turns out black
which means that as far as the colonial government of Brazil is concerned
his main job is to do things he hates
in order to make other (not black) dudes rich
normally this would be called slavery
but Brazil just officially outlawed slavery
so it’s just …
a really bad deal?

Besouro is not a dude who is down with really bad deals
so he gets an old ex-slave dude to teach him Capoeira
(the art of dancing people to death)
and then when he is old enough
he takes justice into his own hands
also his own feet
mostly his feet, actually
Capoeira is mainly kicks

Now, normally one mostly-naked lord of the dance
would have trouble humiliating the entire Brazilian police force
but Besouro has a secret
a secret which is buried in his INCREDIBLY SWEET NAME.
See, the reason he’s called “Besouro” (aka “THE BLACK BEETLE”)
is because he can turn into a black beetle when he’s in trouble
and just fly away.
beetles are pretty slow at flying though
(prolly would have been better if he’d called himself BLACK FALCON or BLACK JET PLANE)
but he also has a last name
Manganga
which means “Totally immune to bullets.”
GUYS
EXCUSE ME WHILE I GO CHANGE MY LAST NAME

But it’s not as easy as just changing your name, my friends
in order to net this sweet bullet immunity
Besouro had to make a deal with Eshu himself
yes that’s rightESHU
PAPA LEGBATHE CIGAR-SMOKING DICK TRAIN WHO LIVES SOLELY TO FUCK WITH PEOPLEIN EVERY SENSE OF THE WORD.
So yeah, Eshu hits up Besouro one day and he’s like “dude
I would love to see some crooked cops get kicked in the mouth
bow down to me and I will make this shit happen.”
and Besouro is initially a little wary of making this deal
but then Eshu hands him his ass in a fight
and Besouro is like “Okay fine
but only because I really like kicking crooked cops in the mouth.”
and Eshu is like “Awesome.
Here’s what we’re gonna do:
me and my pals
– that is, the other Orisha –
are going to give you what is called a closed body
because, see
the reason bullets go into most people’s bodies
is because those bodies are like ‘hey, door’s open, come right in.’
whereas your body is gonna be like ‘hell no, go away’
it is what we like to call
THE ORIGINAL LIFE HACK.”

So for about seven years
that’s all Besouro roams from town to town
humiliating the constabulary with his invincibility
and then turning into a beetle when shit gets too real.
Like, they send a dozen cops after him
and he just takes all their guns
and then shows up to the police station later
with a shopping cart full of guns
like “Here you go guys
I figured you might need these
for arresting someone who is NOT IMMUNE TO FUCKING BULLETS.”

The police don’t really believe the whole bullet immunity thing
because let’s face it, it’s kind of a ridiculous thing to believe
but years go by
and Besouro is just stomping sternums with impunity
and black people are getting disconcertingly independent
and this whole time nobody has hit him with any bullets
so finally the police are like “You know what
we’ve been firing our guns constantly at this guy
for like half a decade
not even Imperial Storm Troopers are this inaccurate.
Maybe … we should use magic?”

So this arch-dickhead named Doutor Zeca talks to a wizard or something
and finds out that whereas Besouro is immune to bullets
the protection does not extend to wooden knives
so he calls up Besouro
and … asks him to deliver a letter to another dude.
So Besouro delivers this letter
which basically says “Dear other dude:
please kill the guy who brought you this letter
he is weak against wooden knives
also prostitutes.
Love, Doutor Zeca.”

Okay, I may be missing something
but WHY ARE EVIL DUDES ALWAYS SENDING LETTERS LIKE THIS?
It happens in Hamlet
it happens in Greek Mythology
are kings just super nervous about getting their hands dirty?
if so, wouldn’t the kings they’re sending these dudes to be just as murder-averse?
maybe every king has one really violent friend
and that’s the dude they send all their enemies to.
I dunno
the point is that Besouro can’t read
so he doesn’t know what he’s getting into
and then his host buys him some sex
(because Besouro isn’t invincible if he gets laid right before a fight)
and then kills him with like 40 dudes
some of whom have wooden knives.
It sucks
but at least he gets a couple songs named after him
also, slavery eventually ends for real
kind of?

Anyway, the moral of the story
is always bring a wooden knife to a gunfight.

So Kullervo gets apprenticed
to a blacksmith and his woman
but the blacksmith’s always elsewhere
so it’s really just the woman
(who’s just called “the blacksmith’s woman.”
Finland doesn’t name its women.)
So this woman sees Kullervo
and she doesn’t really like him
not that I can really blame her
so she packs him up a lunchbox
and then sits him down and tells him:

“I’ma make you be my shepherd
go defend my cows from goblins
also bears and wolves and werewolves
(Finland has a wildlife problem)
then you need to bring them back here
where I’ll milk their fucking tits off
man I REALLY love that dairy
all that butter, milk and yogurt
all that cheese and ice cream sundaes
have you ever taken warm milk
and just poured it on your body
rubbed it all over your body
til it’s dripping off your body
wow I think I have a boner.”
and Kullervo’s like “…okay then”

So he takes the lady’s cattle
out across the Finnish prairie
and it’s really fucking boring
and he’s pretty goddamn hungry
so he digs into his lunchbox
and he finds a big ol’ oat cake
so he sticks his knife into it
(just to see if he can kill it)
but the oat-cake has a secret:
THERE’S A ROCK INSIDE THIS OAT CAKE
WHY ARE ROCKS INSIDE AN OAT CAKE?
CAUSE THAT LADY IS AN ASSHOLE
now Kullervo’s knife is broken
which is really disappointing
how’s he gonna murder people?
but a bird appears and tells him:
“You’re a wizard, dude, remember?
You can fuck shit up with magic.
I’m a bird, and I support this.”
(birds are terrible, I tell you)
so Kullervo calls the goblins
and the wolves, and bears, and werewolves
plus the vultures and the dragons
and the cattle mutilators
man, those cows don’t know what hit em

then he rounds up all those monsters
while they’re gnawing on that beefsteak
and he makes them look like cattle
just to prank his shitty mistress
then he goes back to the castle
and he tells her “come touch udders!”
but she’s like “you fucking do it.”
and he’s like “Oh man, I’d love to
boy these udders look so luscious
I can’t wait to squirt the milk out
squirt it all over my body
rub the nipples on my body
til there’s yogurt on my body…”
and the lady’s like “I’M COMING.”

so she runs into the front yard
all like “LET ME TOUCH THE UDDERS”
but there aren’t any udders
all there is are wolves and goblins
and she’s like “Oh shit, don’t eat me”
and she asks the gods to save her
but Kullervo prays to kill her
and the gods like that dick better
so that crazy dame gets eaten
crying out in butter anguish
and Kullervo’s like “Aw hell yea
serves you right for shitty biscuits
time to go and cause more problems
bet this won’t have consequences.”

Back in old and violent Finland
there’s a farmer named Kalervo
(no relation to Kullervo
other than that he’s his grand-dad?)
and this other dude Untamo
really hates him some Kalervo
cause Kalervo steals his fish
and Untamo hates to share fish
so Untamo kills Kalervo
also all Kalervo’s people
other than his sexy daughter
who is pregnant with Kullervo

Now, Kullervo is a wizard
and he doesn’t have a father
cause he’s Finnish super-jesus
only way more of a dickhead
like they put him in a cradle
which he blows up with his magic
so they’re like “oh shit, a wizard”
and they put him in a basket
put the basket in the river
all like “Welp, it worked on moses”
BUT IT DOESN’T WORK ON THIS DUDE
he just gets out of the basket
so they come back to the river
all like “Wow, we’d better burn him”
so they set his ass on fire
but his ass is like asbestos
so they put out all the fire
all like “dang, let’s crucify him”
But Kullervo’s super-jesus
so it doesn’t even matter.

So Untamo’s freaking out now
(he’s who wants to kill Kullervo)
like “I can’t seem to destroy him
better give him some employment”
so he has him watch a baby
but Kullervo kills the baby
then he has him chop some firewood
but Kullervo kills the forest
then he wants a fence for livestock
but Kullervo makes too much fence
so he has him thresh some wheat
which Kullervo fucking ruins